A still from the video footage of a driver going the wrong way on the A11 and A14. Picture: Tom Hind

Drivers were forced to take evasive action on the northbound carriageway of the busy roads as the female driver, from Ilford, drove at an estimated 50mph in the direction of Cambridge.

Cambridgeshire Police were flooded with 999 calls reporting the incident at around 1.30pm.

Officers were quickly set in pursuit of the car, which travelled along the A11 before reaching the junction with the A14, where it continued in the wrong direction.

Police managed to stop the woman before a serious incident occurred by putting a rolling roadblock in place and bringing her to a stop near Exning.

Video of the incident shows drivers moving to avoid the woman’s Citroen, while flashing lights and sounding their horns in warning to her.

Tom Hind, a piano technician from Hornchurch, who took the video on his mobile phone, said he had been a passenger in a car travelling to the Mildenhall and Lakenheath area with his father when he spotted the car.

“I was checking some emails on my phone, looked up, saw the car, looked back at my phone, and then realised what I had just seen,” he said.

“It was just horrifying. People were honking their horns and flashing lights to get her attention but she just seemed totally oblivious. We were just in sheer amazement.

“In the outside lane of the motorway you are only going to hit one thing and that’s another car. If she’s doing 50 and the other car is doing 70 and there was a family in there, then it would have been horrific.”

A police spokesman said the driver had mental health problems and had been taken home without charge